LinkedIn: 3 tips for building a better profile

(MoneyWatch) Recently, this blog offered a "how-to"on spring-cleaning your resume. Like that document, your LinkedIn profile should constantly evolve along with your experience and interests. Frequent updates keep the content current, and new activity enables you to stay on people's digital radar. If you've already mastered the basics of LinkedIn -- a great profile photo, for instance -- here are three more advanced tips from Nicole Williams, LinkedIn's career expert.

LinkedIn Today allows you to customize your page through subscriptions to channels for real-time news coming from influential people, periodicals and industries. Topics range from social impact to higher education to innovation to big ideas. "Adding these channels will keep the conversation growing and evolving on LinkedIn and at the office," says Williams.

Try the LinkedIn Professional Portfolio

This new feature helps job seekers to improve the visual appeal of their profile with photos, presentations and videos imbedded in their employment history. "Customizing your profile on LinkedIn will make it much more compelling to view by your community as well as by hiring managers, clients and colleagues," says Williams. "This feature truly lets your work speak for itself." Contacts can comment on or like your work, which can naturally start a conversation about future projects or jobs.

List all your experience

Williams notes that a profile with more than one job listed is 12 times more likely to be viewed than one with a single job. And it doesn't matter if you've changed industries. "One great example is a friend who said, 'I used to work in nursing years back and now I'm in marketing. There's no connection.' It turns out that Johnson & Johnson was looking for someone who had a background in health care, and that was what ended up differentiating her," recalls Williams. Even internships and volunteer work can help you come up in key word searches as a probable recruiting match.

What's your favorite LinkedIn trick or tool? Please sign in and share in the comments section.

Amy Levin-Epstein is a freelance writer who has been published in dozens of magazines (including Glamour, Self and Redbook), websites (including AOLHealth.com, Babble.com and Details.com) and newspapers (including The New York Post and the Boston Globe). To read more of her writing, visit AmyLevinEpstein.com.